


knock knock

by simplycarryon



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, bad jokes sad jokes, late-game spoilers, laughing in the face of inevitability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-09-24
Packaged: 2018-04-23 05:31:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4864907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplycarryon/pseuds/simplycarryon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You tell bad jokes to the door in the forest, because that's the best way to wait out the silence.</p><p>One day, the door jokes back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	knock knock

“Knock knock,” you say, tapping on the door that most decidedly does not reply. It hasn’t in the past, which is about the same as bouncing your jokes off your brother’s skull because after about the tenth one he usually doesn’t reply either. So you joke at the door, because the door is decidedly less likely to start throwing things after the fifteenth joke.

 _Who’s there,_ you imagine the door saying, to which you reply, “Dozen.”

_Dozen who?_

“Dozen anyone want to let me in?” you ask, snickering. The door, predictably, does not reply. Apparently your interest in imagining its responses only extends to the end of the joke. That’s fine, though; you’re not accustomed to an audience that does more than roll their eyesockets at you.

“Knock knock,” you continue, sitting in the snow, leaning your back against your comedy partner. You could clear an actual patch in the snow to sit in, sure, but that would be work, and it’s not like you can feel the cold anyway. “Lettuce,” beat, “lettuce in, it’s freezing out here.” 

You laugh at yourself. It’s really only fair.

You should be on sentry duty, but _technically you are_ because where else is a human going to come through, if not this door? And if they’re coming through this door, they might as well be treated to a barrage of knock-knock jokes. It’s sort of like a welcoming committee, though you have a few other things planned for _that_ eventuality. 

“Knock knock.” _Who’s there?_ “Scold.” _Scold who?_ “S’cold enough out here to go ice skating.”

Besides, there’s enough sentry stations in Snowdin. And a lot of dogs. Even with your brother being, well, himself—someone’ll catch the human, even if the two of you don’t. Maybe they won’t even get past the door, you think. It is pretty heavy. And very locked. And who knows what’s taken up residence in the Ruins. Maybe the human won’t want to leave. Or be able to.

Part of you knows better than to hope that, at this point.

“Knock knock,” you tell the door one more time, tapping it over your shoulder. It’s about time for your legally required break, but you don’t need to get up just yet—

“Who is there?” the door asks, softly.

You grin.

“Dishes.”

“Dishes who?”

“Dishes a very bad joke.”

The door is silent for a moment, and then a bleat of laughter breaks Snowdin’s snow-carpeted silence. 

\---

After the first day, you keep ‘em coming. You’ve memorized an entire _universe_ of bad jokes, after all, and you figure the voice could use a laugh. So you roll with the punches, you ditch your station, and you lean against the door and keep on cracking, trading jokes with your new partner in comedy crime.

“How do snails fight?” the voice asks.

“How?” you ask in return.

“They _slug it out,_ ” the voice replies, shaking with contained laughter, and you snort. 

“Why can’t a nose be twelve inches long?” you ask.

“I do not know, why?”

“Because then it’d be a foot.”

The voice loses it. You just keep grinning. 

\---

“Why do ghosts like elevators?”

“Because they are very useful to get places?”

“Because they _lift their spirits,_ ” you say.

Her howl of laughter is what keeps you going, really. You could be anywhere else in the underground, but this is where you choose to be, leaning on a stone door and trading terrible jokes. 

You wish, not for the first time, that you could keep time suspended here.

You’d like to be able to tell jokes forever.

You’d like to hear her happy forever.

\---

“I sold my vacuum the other day,” you say, hands in your pockets, propping yourself up against the door with one shoulder. It’s not like it’s going to open, anyway; what a fool you’d look if it did. “All it was doing was collecting dust.”

She laughs, but this time—

This time you know.

“What do you call a fake noodle?” you prompt, breaking out your brother’s favorite joke, not wanting to let go. “An impasta.”

That barely nets you a chuckle.

“What did one ocean say to the other ocean?” You try once more, almost desperate, leaning your head against the door this time; you’re not ready for this again, not yet. You wouldn’t be, ever, if you had the choice. 

But you don’t. You never have.

“Nothing,” you answer for her, grinning against the dark stone of the door. “They just waved.”

She doesn’t say anything, and you let the silence settle, for a moment, before knocking twice. “Hey. What’s up?”

“Could you please promise me something?” she asks, after a pause.

“Anything.”

“If a human ever comes through this door… will you protect them?”

This is it, then. 

You press your forehead to the stone, and wonder if she’s doing the same on the other side.

“Please,” she adds, and the way her voice cracks makes you flinch. “Please. Watch over them. See them safely to their journey’s end.”

“I promise,” you reply. You don’t like making promises, especially not this one. Life's simpler when you don't owe anyone anything, when all you have to worry about is yourself and your bonehead brother, but it's too late for that now. It's been too late for that for a long time. And for her sake, you could promise the world and you’d still try to deliver.

“Thank you.”

It’s quiet again, for a few minutes, as you lean against the door. You can’t hear anything from the other side; she’s still there, she always is, but you’re lost for words and you know this is the beginning of the end, so what’s the point?

And then—

“Knock knock,” she says.

“Who’s there?” you ask, automatically.

“Boo.”

“Boo who?”

“Do not cry,” she says, her voice trembling. “It is only a knock-knock joke.”

If you could cry, you might. Instead, you laugh, and it echoes in the snow-laden forest. You can almost hear her smile, from behind the stone door standing sentry between ruin and snow, and you lean against the door and you don’t let the hopelessness break you today.

There’s jokes to be told, after all. And you have a promise to keep.


End file.
